Anders Drachen

What Moves Players?: Visual Data Exploration of Twitter and Gameplay Data

In recent years, microblogging platforms have not only become an important communication channel for the game industry to generate and uphold audience interest but also a rich resource for gauging player opinion. In this paper we use data gathered from Twitter to examine which topics matter to players and to identify influential members of a games community. By triangulating in-game data with Twitter activity we explore how tweets can provide contextual information for understanding fluctuations in in-game activity. To facilitate analysis of the data we introduce a visual data exploration tool and use it to analyze tweets related to the game Destiny. In total, we collected over one million tweets from about 250,000 users over a 14-month period and gameplay data from roughly 3,500 players over a six-month period.

Analyzing player networks in Destiny

Abstract Destiny is a hybrid online shooter sharing features with Massively Multi-Player Online Games and first-person shooters and is the to date the most expensive digital game produced. It has attracted millions of players to compete or collaborate within a persistent online environment. In multiplayer online games, the interaction between the players and the social community that forms in persistent games forms a crucial element in retaining and entertaining players. Social networks in games have thus been a focus of research, but the relationships between player behavior, performance, engagement and the networks forming as a result of interactions, are not well understood. In this paper, a large-scale study of social networks in hybrid online games/shooters is presented. In a network of over 3 million players, the connections formed via direct competitive play are explored and analyzed to answer five main research question focusing on the patterns of players who play with the same people and those who play with random groups, and how differences in this behavior influence performance and engagement metrics. Results show that players with stronger social relationships have a higher performance based on win/loss ratio and kill/death ratio, as well as a tendency to play more and longer.

Online-only friends, real-life friends or strangers? Differential associations with passion and social capital in video game play

The present study tests a recently proposed model in which social video game play supports wellbeing by contributing to a harmonious type of engagement with the game. Players (N=2030) of the online-only multiplayer first-person shooter game, Destiny, reported the frequency they played with real-life friends, online-only friends and strangers, their type of engagement with the game measured as harmonious and obsessive passion, and completed a wellbeing measure of social capital. Telemetry data also recorded their total time playing over the duration of the study. A structural equation model supported the prediction that harmonious but not obsessive passion would mediate the positive association between playing with others and social capital. The findings also supported a supplementary hypothesis that the three types of social relationships would be differentially associated with two forms of social capital bridging versus bonding as a function of the closeness of social ties. Real-life friends was positively associated with bonding, strangers with bridging, and online-only friends with both. Overall, these results emphasise that social interactions in (and around) online multiplayer video games are effective for building social capital, and do so by ensuring game play is in harmony with other goals and values. Social capital (SC) from video games differs across relationships with other players.Closer social ties (real-life and online-only friends) associated with bonding SC.More distal ties (strangers and online-only friends) associated with bridging SC.Each relationship type led to SC via increased harmonious passion for the game.Online-only friends also associated with playing for longer (via obsessive passion).

Curiously Motivated: Profiling Curiosity with Self-Reports and Behaviour Metrics in the Game "Destiny"

Identifying player motivations such as curiosity could help game designers analyze player profiles and substantially improve game design. However, research on player profiling focuses on generalized personality traits, not specific aspects of motivation. This study examines how player behaviour indicates constructs of curiosity-related motivation. It contributes a more discriminating operationalization of game-related curiosity. We derive a curiosity measure from established self-report survey methodologies relating to social capital, behavioural activation, obsessive/harmonious passion, and BrainHex player types. We present the results of a cross-sectional study with data from 1,745 players of Destiny--a popular shared-world first-person shooter (FPS) game. Behaviour metrics were paired with four curiosity factors: social curiosity, sensory/cognitive curiosity, novelty-seeking curiosity, and explorative curiosity. Our findings provide key insights into the relationships between players curiosity and their in-game behaviour. We infer curiosity-related motivational profiles from behaviour metrics, and discuss how this may impact game design and player-computer interaction.

Exploring the relationship between video game expertise and fluid intelligence

Hundreds of millions of people play intellectually-demanding video games every day. What does individual performance on these games tell us about cognition? Here, we describe two studies that examine the potential link between intelligence and performance in one of the most popular video games genres in the world (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas: MOBAs). In the first study, we show that performance in the popular MOBA League of Legends’ correlates with fluid intelligence as measured under controlled laboratory conditions. In the second study, we also show that the age profile of performance in the two most widely-played MOBAs (League of Legends and DOTA II) matches that of raw fluid intelligence. We discuss and extend previous videogame literature on intelligence and videogames and suggest that commercial video games can be useful as proxy tests of cognitive performance at a global population level.

Narrative Bytes: Data-Driven Content Production in Esports

Esports - video games played competitively that are broadcast to large audiences - are a rapidly growing new form of mainstream entertainment. Esports borrow from traditional TV, but are a qualitatively different genre, due to the high flexibility of content capture and availability of detailed gameplay data. Indeed, in esports, there is access to both real-time and historical data about any action taken in the virtual world. This aspect motivates the research presented here, the question asked being: can the information buried deep in such data, unavailable to the human eye, be unlocked and used to improve the live broadcast compilations of the events? In this paper, we present a large-scale case study of a production tool called Echo, which we developed in close collaboration with leading industry stakeholders. Echo uses live and historic match data to detect extraordinary player performances in the popular esport Dota 2, and dynamically translates interesting data points into audience-facing graphics. Echo was deployed at one of the largest yearly Dota 2 tournaments, which was watched by 25 million people. An analysis of 40 hours of video, over 46,000 live chat messages, and feedback of 98 audience members showed that Echo measurably affected the range and quality of storytelling, increased audience engagement, and invoked rich emotional response among viewers.

Social Aspects of the Game Development Process in the Global Gam Jam

Game jamming is a valuable tool and process to connect game developers from a range of disciplines such as art, programming, audio engineering, or story-telling. The Global Game Jam® (GGJ) thus fundamentally supports the process of connecting people, and forms a basis for studying teamwork formation and -mechanics. It is an annual event, where participants (jammers) meet on physical locations to develop games together within a short time-span of 48 hours. People with similar interest but different skill-sets have the chance to meet and collaborate to create prototypes of games together, whether digital or analog. In this explorative study, data from the GGJ website across four years of game jams and their participants are analyzed, towards investigating group interaction and group forming behavior. The focus is on using social network analysis and social metrics to evaluate the influence of a) jammer skillset and b) jam locations, on social and communicative structures among game jammers in the GGJ environment. The findings suggest that different skill-sets support different forms of social structures and also setups in countries refer to different group sizes and different social structures.

Player retention in league of legends: a study using survival analysis

Multi-player online esports games are designed for extended durations of play, requiring substantial experience to master. Furthermore, esports game revenues are increasingly driven by in-game purchases. For esports companies, the trends in players leaving their games therefore not only provide information about potential problems in the user experience, but also impacts revenue. Being able to predict when players are about to leave the game - churn prediction - is therefore an important solution for companies in the rapidly growing esports sector, as this allows them to take action to remedy churn problems. The objective of the work presented here is to understand the impact of specific behavioral characteristics on the likelihood of a player continuing to play the esports title League of Legends. Here, a solution to the problem is presented based on the application of survival analysis, using Mixed Effects Cox Regression, to predict player churn. Survival Analysis forms a useful approach for the churn prediction problem as it provides rates as well as an assessment of the characteristics of players who are at risk of leaving the game. Hazard rates are also presented for the leading indicators, with results showing that duration between matches played is a strong indicator of potential churn.

To be or not to be...social: incorporating simple social features in mobile game customer lifetime value predictions

Mobile games make up the largest segment of the games industry, in terms of revenue as well as players. Hundreds of thousands of games are available with most being free to download and play. In freemium games, revenue is predominantly generated by users making in-game purchases. As only a small fraction of users make purchases, predicting these users and their Customer Lifetime Value are key challenges in Game Analytics and currently barely explored in academic research. Furthermore, while social factors have been shown to be essential for retention in games in general, the impact on retention and monetization in mobile games is unexplored. In this paper, the problem of defining social features in freemium casual mobile games is addressed through a case study with over 200,000 players. The study evaluates the influence of specific types of social interactions typical of casual mobile games, on predictions of premium users and Customer Lifetime Value by applying classifiers and regression models respectively. Results indicate that social activity does not correlate with the tendency to become a premium user, but that social activity increases over time in a cohort.

Controlling the crucible: a novel PvP recommender systems framework for destiny

Compared to conventional retail games, todays Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have become progressively more complex and volatile, living in a highly competitive market. Consumable resources in such games are nearly unlimited, making decisions to improve levels of engagement more challenging. Intelligent information filtering methods here can help players make smarter decisions, thereby improving performance, increasing level of engagement, and reducing the likelihood of early departure. In this paper, a novel approach towards building a hybrid multi-profile based recommender system for player-versus-player (PvP) content in the MMOG Destiny is presented. The framework groups the players based on three distinct traced behavioral aspects: base stats, cooldown stats, and weapon playstyle. Different combinations of these profiles are considered to make behavioral recommendations. An online evaluation was performed to investigate the usefulness of the proposed recommender framework to players of Destiny.